Enervate
by metacognitive
Summary: An exercise in love and survival; Lily Luna grows up in war. T for subject matter.


_Title: Enervate_  
_Summary: An exercise in love and survival; Lily Luna grows up in war._  
_Character(s): Lily Luna Potter, various  
Disclaimer: I own nothing._  
_Notes: Prologue. This will hopefully be a huge epic and/or love letter to the fandom, but I procrastinate a lot and have a variety of RL things to get done too. Reviews are love! :)_

* * *

we want more than this world's got to offer/we want more than the wars of our fathers  
switchfoot, "meant to live"

* * *

Victoire comes out around the time Lily's thirteen.

By then the war has been going on about two years, not that the hazards of wartime have stopped Liora Thomas from having a baby with Yves de Gaulle, French wizard rock star. They'd been introduced through Roxanne Weasley, just before she ran off and changed her last name to "Wesley" in order to better live life as a muggle artist. No one's heard from her in months, and to be honest, no one else really expects anything more. Regardless of that unsavory bit of Weasley-family-business, Liora and Yves had hit it off immediately, and though the relationship lasted no more than six months, Liora ended up pregnant and everyone in the wizarding community was thrilled that such a _beautiful_ and _talented_ woman could have a child with such a _handsome_ and _gifted_ man.

They all looked over the fact that Liora would miss out on a year with the Chudley Cannons, and that said rock star had already been seen with Juniper Pratt, London-based magic-radio announcer who was known for a bit of a fire-whiskey dependency. It didn't matter, really. The baby was named Jared Dean Thomas, and he was roughly a year old at the time of Victoire's announcement.

Normally, his age would be rather inconsequential, as would his mother's very existence, however there's more to this back story than one would think. See, Victoire and Liora were best friends, had been two-thirds of the entire female Ravenclaw population of their year, and while Vic was prefect and then Head Girl with Liora as the passive-aggressive captain of the house's Quidditch team, they knew they would always be friends.

And while Lorcan Scamander, Liora's half-brother, had been convinced the two were having an illicit (his words) love affair during their time at Hogwarts, in reality it was not until the two were nineteen that Victoire confessed to her best friend that, hey, Lorcan was onto something when he suggested the two of them were together.

It was an awkward conversation, of course. Liora had just started seeing Yves; in fact, the photo of them – Liora in a tight shimmering dress and pumps and he in a sparkly muggle-style shirt and pants in one of the more tawdry areas of Diagon Alley, where so many of the big-headed celebrities gathered – that had been circulating the tabloids is what pushed Victoire to confessing her feelings.

"Weasley," Liora had said (or so one would imagine), "Vic. Weasley? I. I love you, you know, we're best friends, I'm not sure how to function without you in my life but, you know, um. I'm kind of straight."

"Ah, yes," Victoire no doubt responded, "I realize that. Know that. It's not like there are photographs of you and de Gaulle making out in all the mags, or anything."

"Yves," she probably corrected, wincing when she realized the insensitivity of her reaction, "sorry. But. Yeah. Sorry about that. Um. And I guess, about. Not being lesbian?"

Victoire probably sighed here, perhaps with Liora trying not to punch herself in the face. Ravenclaws are often just a bit socially unbalanced. It's a price to pay for glory.

Lily doesn't know if this happened, actually – she just imagines that this is similar to the conversation that took place. If she were a muggle, she figures, she'd make a load of money writing about stupid people in love. It would be a good life, really. But regardless, six months before Victoire came out to the family (save Dominique and a family friend named Eileen, the latter of which for more risqué reasons), Liora had apparently changed her mind, leading to an entire spread in the gossip mags about the two of them being spotted on the date. It's funny, because the photograph of them showed no romantic inclination. It was the two of them and little JD at a café, chatting and laughing. The only way you could tell the two were romantically linked was the way they looked at each other, all shining eyes and hysterically happy smiles.

It's sickening; it's like seeing her parents and aunts and uncles look at each other and just be happy and Lily can't stand it.

But that's not the point. What matters is that Victoire got it easily out of all of them. What was supposed to be a fairytale ending with her becoming Mrs. Teddy Lupin turned into her becoming the partner to one of the best beaters in recent Quidditch history. No doubt Oliver Wood would have tried to marry the girl if he himself were so inclined to date the children of former housemates. As it were, he was not. Victoire herself was well on her way to such a fate, however the whole war issue got in the way.

That, really, is what this is all about. It's been all of two weeks since the war ended, and Lily is rather done with all the mopey gory details that are still circulating. It's not that she doesn't feel bad, it's not that she hasn't lost people. She has. Uncle Bill is gone, Dominique nearly died, and Albus is still in St. Mungo's, too out of his mind to realize that everyone can relax.

They can't, but that's not the point, either.

There's been too much gore and danger in the past five years for people to relax. To forget. Lily isn't going to forget, and she knows that no one in her family will, because they don't have the right. It's always them in the middle of it, and it's always the people they love that get remembered. No one will remember that her uncle killed a woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time without the right survival tools, and no one will remember that she, Lily, threw a Cruciatus at one of the cronies sent to conquer Hogwarts. Teddy will be a hero, and so will Dominique, and all the nasty bits of history will be forgotten. Again. As always.

Lily Luna Potter is sixteen years old, and the whole world has been war since she was eleven. Her first year at Hogwarts quickly dissolved from excitement at being a Gryffindor with Hugo and Al and James and well, everyone save Victoire and Louis, to horror as news of attacks in Serbia spread to every nation in the European block before spreading up to Great Britain. But now, the summer before her sixth year at Hogwarts, a shiny prefect badge already awaiting to be packed, her Aunt Hermione's voice exudes from the silvery patronus of a cat, announcing, "Deianira Jabez has been killed in Dublin, Ilyas d'Hayek captured in Nijmegan. All leading officers of the Rebellion have been captured." Lily hears it from all the way upstairs on the roof, where she is sitting and watching the sunset and perhaps waiting for an attack by those same rebels Hermione seems to think can be controlled.

Lily is not so foolish to believe that.

.


End file.
